OS Neutral Star Citizen (open-universe space sim) is moving into its last day of crowd funding!

macrumors member

For those who haven't heard the buzz, Chris Roberts (creator of games such as Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Privateer, Freelancer) is back in the games industry with a new project going by the name Star Citizen. It's ambitious and looks very exciting (imho), and CR has gone the crowd funding route to get things rolling no doubt hoping a lot of gamers will feel this way. To do date they do: Over USD4.5 million has been raised at time of writing.

Now the crowd funding campaign is entering its last day, so if you want to be a part of things get on over to the website and check it out!

macrumors 6502a

This looks awesome, I love space sims, and have been playing on old copy of Terminus in Wineskin on my MBA. I have been meaning to get Freelancer up and running, or Privateer, but it looks like that won't be necessary!

Interestingly, over in the UK Kickstarter, David Braben is crowd-funding a new "Elite" game.

thread startermacrumors member

I saw the Elite campaign, iirc it began a week or so ago (hmm, CR might have stirred a sleeping giant here...). It looks like they'll be focussing on the exploring side of things in particular - they're aiming for a *lot* of procedurally generated stars. Will be interesting to see what they're thinking as more details come together. I might be backing a few space games!

PS. SC campaign now at over USD4.8 million total with ~22 hours to go.. Live feeds to start from the main website before too long. Exciting times!

thread startermacrumors member

Just over 9 hours to go and the campaign's almost at USD5.5 million! Amazingly it looks like SC will surpass all stretch goals and the carrier will be a flyable ship on launch. Woohoo! SC is now (and was before now) the most successful game crowd-funding campaign to date, presuming I've got my facts right.

Also the live feed for the final stretch is active at robertsspaceindustries.com now

macrumors 6502a

I pledged to this game Friday night, looks immense. Tried Eve online and was a bit disappointed that the flight was point and click, really want a space combat sim along the lines of X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and the Wing Commander, so Star Citizen looks very exciting, especially the Squadron 42 campaign.

macrumors 6502a

Just over 9 hours to go and the campaign's almost at USD5.5 million! Amazingly it looks like SC will surpass all stretch goals and the carrier will be a flyable ship on launch. Woohoo! SC is now (and was before now) the most successful game crowd-funding campaign to date, presuming I've got my facts right.

Also the live feed for the final stretch is active at robertsspaceindustries.com now

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Anyone with any interest at all in space-sims has been starved now for about a decade, even with re-playing older games, such as Freespace, Freelancer, etc.

Interestingly, it looks like a lot of funding may be coming from Europe? I'm looking at the difference between their own website, and the Kickstarter site. Just thinking that it looks like (between the time differences between the US and Europe) there will always be something going on in the multiplayer game.

macrumors member

Already a funder! It looks so good. I pledged 37$ so that I essentially made money off or rather saved it off of my investment as the game is going to be released at 60$ usd and I only technically paid 37.

Interestingly, it looks like a lot of funding may be coming from Europe? I'm looking at the difference between their own website, and the Kickstarter site. Just thinking that it looks like (between the time differences between the US and Europe) there will always be something going on in the multiplayer game.

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Yeah, very true. I think CR's involvement and public engagement in particular have been a deciding factor the campaign's success - if it was someone else they probably wouldn't have raised this much.

On the funding sources, I was wondering about this too. I think the one week or so's head start for the main site campaign contributed in a big way to it leading the Kickstarter site, but whether there is also a regional bias I don't know. For mine I hail from Australia, and I pledged on the main site and then later on the Kickstarter site. Maybe we'll find out in time. As you say, no doubt there will always be something going on.

thread startermacrumors member

What are you playing in the line of a space-sim right now? I'm curious, I have an older game (Terminus--see Wikipedia description
but I'm always up for new suggestions!

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Terminus sounds like fun! Actually I haven't been playing many PC games lately (for lack of a decent computer), so the most recent space sim I've played is Galaxy On Fire 2 for iOS. It's a great iOS game, and a good game in its own right, but not quite up to the standard of the bigger PC titles. In particular the simple physics and collision mechanics limit the depth of dog fighting. Worth a look though!

macrumors 6502a

I backed this, but no longer have a PC, and don't plan on buying a Windows license. Before I sold my PC, I had tried out the dogfighting module, which was fun. Hangar was... well, it was the hangar; wasn't much to do.

macrumors G3

I backed this, but no longer have a PC, and don't plan on buying a Windows license. Before I sold my PC, I had tried out the dogfighting module, which was fun. Hangar was... well, it was the hangar; wasn't much to do.

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Actually I don't see my self investing until I see more. It looks like it could be a step beyond Eve (which I tried)?

macrumors 6502a

Actually I don't see my self investing until I see more. It looks like it could be a step beyond Eve (which I tried)?

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Holy cow, am I in...I pledged about just under $500...I'm excited, but I only check it out about once a month now.

Basically, if you check it out every day or week, you start going nuts because it isn't going to be released until 2015-16. (Every forum thread seems to have a fan going through a melt-down about how the game isn't finished yet). They released the dogfighting module (Arena Commander) while still pre-Alpha (but perfectly playable) to give people a taste, but that doesn't stop people from going "Are we there yet?"

I give the developers a lot of credit...they really have involved the fans in almost every aspect (that they can), but people have to realize that it takes years to develop an AAA title. The fact that Chris Roberts doesn't have to pander to some publisher or big corporate idiot's ideas about what would make a "good" (read: marketable) game is exciting.

macrumors 6502a

My primary issue with the game is scope creep. They keep adding more and more to it, and I know much of that was from Kickstarter stretch goals, but still -- I think there's too much being done now. Chris Roberts' plans sound great on paper, but people will continue to criticize until they can really play the game, and they release date will continue to get pushed out.

I had ordered a 300i ship if I recall correctly. Maybe $60?

FWIW, I do like pretty much all of his previous games. Let's not talk about that Wing Commander movie

macrumors 6502a

I backed this, but no longer have a PC, and don't plan on buying a Windows license. Before I sold my PC, I had tried out the dogfighting module, which was fun. Hangar was... well, it was the hangar; wasn't much to do.

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I had meant to say, the funding goals for a Mac & Linux version were reached a long time ago (I had a laugh at one of my earlier posts, were I related that they had just passed $6 million in funding...wasn't that about $44 million ago?), so you should be able to play it whenever those are released.

Alas, the pre-release stuff will all be on Windoze...hey, maybe M$ will make Windows 9 free???

macrumors 6502a

I had meant to say, the funding goals for a Mac & Linux version were reached a long time ago (I had a laugh at one of my earlier posts, were I related that they had just passed $6 million in funding...wasn't that about $44 million ago?), so you should be able to play it whenever those are released.

Alas, the pre-release stuff will all be on Windoze...hey, maybe M$ will make Windows 9 free???

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Oh, wow! I didn't notice that was even one of the stretch goals. YES! This is the best thread I've read all day!

macrumors 6502a

My primary issue with the game is scope creep. They keep adding more and more to it, and I know much of that was from Kickstarter stretch goals, but still -- I think there's too much being done now. Chris Roberts' plans sound great on paper, but people will continue to criticize until they can really play the game, and they release date will continue to get pushed out.

I had ordered a 300i ship if I recall correctly. Maybe $60?

FWIW, I do like pretty much all of his previous games. Let's not talk about that Wing Commander movie

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Yea, I can't help but think the thing has bloated out such that no amount of project management will reel it back in. I haven't really paid much attention since my 60 bucks. I think I saw there's a hanger or something you can download now.

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